Essay Published in “Forget Fear” – 7th Berlin Biennale’s Book

To protest Israel’s occupation of Palestine (and occupation everywhere), I was invited to collaborate with Khaled Jarrar to stamp my passport and raise my pen. Khaled’s State of Palestine project is being shown at the 7th Berlin Bienalle and to accompany it, an article I wrote about my contribution to the project (a performance with the stamp in my Israeli and American passports) has been published in the Bienalle’s book.

FORGET FEAR

THE FIRST PUBLICATION OF THE 7TH BERLIN BIENNALE

edited by Artur Żmijewski and Joanna Warsza.

“The first publication of the 7th Berlin Biennale—Forget Fear—is a report on real action within culture, on the uses of artistic pragmatism. It is about concrete dealings by artists, curators, and politicians that lead to visible effects. We’re interested in finding answers, not asking questions. We’re interested in situations where art acts for real and solutions are proposed and implemented responsibly. We are interested neither in preserving artistic immunity nor in distancing ourselves from society. We consider politics to be among the most complex and difficult of human activities. We sought out people—artists, activists, politicians—who engage in substantive politics through art.

Forget Fear includes texts and conversations with political leaders such as Antanas Mockus, former mayor of Bogotá, who has significantly contributed to social change with a political theory stemming from art; theater-maker Árpád Schilling, who abandoned bourgeois theater to act directly within the political context of right-wing Hungary; Voina Group, who doesn’t believe in art without engagement; Tímea Junghaus, who uses art in a struggle against the oppression of the Roma people in Europe; the Brazilian underclass tagger groups Pixadores, who attacked the Sao Paolo Biennale; and the Icelandic Best Party, which came to power after the financial crash in 2008. All these actors use performative tools in order to make their cases, and to reveal the social and political forces and interests lurking in the background. With this first publication, we present leftist engagement not only as a critical, self-referential condition, but also as a proposition for empowerment and a productive set of political practices.”